More Attractive to Urbanites

The plantations have also become a tourist attraction. As of 1999, the village started to sell tickets to visitors, making the village one of the first in the country to sell access to itself. Tourists came for its beautiful flower fields and elegant gardens, students for strawberry-picking adventures and newlyweds for picturesque wedding photos. The revenue from ticket sales in 2009 alone reached RMB 26.3 million, and the comprehensive tourism income totaled nearly RMB 119 million.

Since the Shanghai Expo kicked off, the number of visitors to Tengtou showed an increase of 20 percent compared with same period last year, according to the village committee.

Rural cadres from other parts of the country are attracted to Tengtou to study the model and the experience, something that makes the local leaders feel a little nervous as well as proud. Despite its successful integration of ecological commitments with economic achievements, Fu Deming, chairman of Tengtou Village Federation of Trade Unions, states candidly that there is still much room for Tengtou to improve, both in ecological conservation and technology utilization. He also emphasizes that Tengtou, just like other villages in China, faces some difficult challenges such as improving the quality of the villagers and village management.

As the only rural example at the Shanghai Expo, Tengtou Pavilion is built to mimic Tengtou Village. The pavilion resembles a classic water-town building back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which is surrounded by canals, rice paddys and bamboo grove. Stepping into the pavilion, visitors can hear the voices of nature -- croaking frogs, singing birds, babbling water and whinying horses -- surrounding visitors with a peaceful rural soundscape.

In the interests of authentic replication, its black-and-white outer wall was built with over 500,000 brick fragments with an age of at least 100 years, collected in half a year from villages in Xiangshan, Yinzhou and Fenghua.

In the center of the pavilion there is a green paddy field, with strawberries planted in the corner. Visitors could be forgiven for thinking that they are enjoying a leisurely existence in the land of bounty. A staff member at the pavilion told China Today that he hopes every visitor to the Tengtou Pavilion will be convinced of its theme and slogan: "Rural life is more attractive to urbanites."